First drive: 2013 Range Rover

Originally published: January 24, 2013

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MEDIUM

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The last time I drove this car, I broke my leg. It was my ankle, actually, but when you’re hobbling around for two months, who quibbles? Indeed, I just got my fat ass off the couch to write this evaluation and my cranky right fibula reminded me, lest I had somehow managed to forget, that my ankle did, in fact, suffer a non-displaced distal avulsion.

I mention this not because I am looking for sympathy (having broken it while in exotic Morocco testing a $100,000 luxury car, I am not expecting much in the way of commiseration), but rather because the resultant cast – well set by my Moroccan physician, I might add – may have prevented me from fully appreciating the new Range Rover’s newfound might. In retrospect, I probably never opened the supercharged 5.0-litre’s throttle butterflies past half mast.

This explains why I was so startled by how quick the new, aluminum-bodied luxury SUV is upon further testing here at home. The Range Rover’s purported acceleration stats don’t really do the change in its sprightliness justice. According to the automaker, the newly svelte Range Rover scoots to 100 kilometres an hour 0.8 seconds faster than the former Pudgeasuarus Rex (5.4 seconds for the new versus 6.2 for the old) steel-bodied version.

But even that fairly dramatic (remember that competitors in any segment get all hot and bothered if they can boast a 0.2 second advantage so and eye blink and a quarter is quite significant) improvement really doesn’t capture the magnitude of the improvement. The immediacy of the new Range Rover’s throttle response is startling and on par with the Cayenne Turbo or even BMW’s twice-turbocharged X6M. There’s an immediacy to every massaging of the loud pedal that promises a sportiness no other Land Rover product has ever delivered. Indeed, the previous version feels like a Clydesdale in comparison to the new model’s quarter horse; both are incredibly muscular but one, lithe and gazelle-like, sprints while the other, built on a stouter frame, merely lumbers.

But the magic of the newly Weight Watched Range Rover is that, despite its new quarter horse sprightliness, it has not given up on iota of its Clydesdale-like abilities. Indeed, of the reasons I didn’t get to sample the 2013’s is that there was a monsoon going on (who knew that Morocco had a rainy season?) that washed away many of the roads and made the already difficult off-road treks near impossible.

For anything other than a Range Rover, that is. In complete contrast to its on-road comportment, the big ute’s off-road ability remains the same as its predecessor: virtually unstoppable. Oh, the folks at Land Rover boast a few more degrees of approach angles (essentially the steepest hill the RR can descend without grinding its front bumper on the bottom), and a little more ground clearance, but seriously, lauding such changes is a little like winning the lottery when you’re already a billionaire.

One addition, however, may benefit the amateur boondocker: The second generation of Range Rover’s patented Terrain Response system (which tailors the ute’s various electronic sensors, hydraulic actuators, differentials and anti-lock brakes to specific settings General, Grass/Gravel/Snow, Mud/Ruts, Sand, and Rock Crawl) now features an Auto position. Yes, the off-road autopilot control has arrived. If you’re driving along the highway and suddenly see a desert or mountain range that needs traversing, you need to do nothing more than steer the big ute toward the offending terrain.

Indeed, it is the effortlessness with which the new Range Rover straddles the two extremes of its mandate that is truly amazing.

On the one end, it will rail around a race track with much the aplomb of the sportiest of utes and on the other, it will crawl through the underbrush like a stripped-down Defender. Indeed, were a race set up – a la motorcycle supermotard format – where the contestants had to first clambour over Mosport (oops, Canadian Tire) Raceway’s new off-road circuit and then jet around its world famous, 10-turn road course, the new Range Rover would win in a walk.

The new, all aluminium Rangie is not perfect – there’s a little too much chrome trim inside and not enough wood for my liking and, please oh, please will someone tell the electrical engineers of the automotive world that having to tune radio stations via a touchscreen instead of a simple knob (ditto for the navigation’s zoom function) is utter nonsense. But it is now, by far, the most versatile luxury vehicle in the world. Nothing else comes close.